Shuck (17 page)

“What are you writing today?” Richard asked.

Snap, click, whirr.

“Personal stuff.”

“Of course, but hello? Try me.”

“It's about Derek.”

He looked at me through a lens I can now almost see myself through.

“Don't tell me you're falling in love.”

Click.

“Well, no, but ... we're together. And I'm learning things about myself.”

“And you're saying it's all because of him?”

“No, but he's involved.”

“In what?”

“My changes.”

“Right, so you're writing about yourself then, not about him.”

“I guess.”

“By the way, I'm asking you, not telling you.”

“I know.”

Richard's wise. I'm not sure what such a guru gets out of taking pictures of a hustler scribbling shirtless on his floor, though I'm sure he'll eventually fill me in.

He's wise, but I don't think he sees the whole picture.

Shit and ephemera from another one of my tweak runs:

Japanese transvestite manga porn, razors, poetry, socks, roses, brand new televisions, vomit broken down into ingredients, unlabeled keys dangling over sewers, dead bumblebees, anonymous phone numbers on scraps of paper, unidentifiable plastic widgets.

Traces of a New York that one day, in all likelihood, won't exist.

Beauty is designed to crumble just when you learn to appreciate it.

Pretend Indian massage and bullshit chakra-tuning to Spandau Ballet's “True,” so good it can be done with or without clothes.

Playguy
cover and special pin-up centerfold, September 1999. Crystal Vase shoots in a well-known but secret midtown BDSM dungeon. It's a duo set, and I'm wearing an eye patch. I lay a sales boy from the Body Shop on a hospital gurney and make him drink my cum. He gives good camera winces when I pretend to tattoo my name into his arm with a cigarette. I make sure to pause and smile for Crystal.

Fan letter to
Playguy
, October 1999:

“I believe in your work,” Derek tells me in bed.

I don't say anything.

“Can I ask you a question?” he says, stroking my face. “Why doesn't the kid in your stories have a name?”

I don't say anything because I know that as soon as I open my mouth, I'll just end up crying a year's worth of shit that he won't be able to decipher.

Vespers that bloom in the dark, trashed artwork, torn manuscripts, poetry you'll never see, last words spoken to dying people who are actually already dead, most definitions of love, most definitions of death, things that are supposed to happen but don't.

BECAUSE CENTRAL PARK LOOKS freaky when all the leaves fall off and the trees just stand there naked and cold. Because naked bodies are hiding under heavier and heavier clothes.

My fingers are starting to freeze again when I smoke, and the air is starting to smoke when I breathe.

The cold rain can throw me into such a wicked mood.

“Jaeven Marshall, are you listening to me?”

Derek Brathwaite towered over my chair like a police investigator, an unlikely detective in his paint-smeared shirt. He was staring at me, and maybe through me a little.

“What does it look like,” I said.

“Of course you're listening. You're a speed freak. You have no choice but to be attentive.”

“I need to be aware of my surroundings.”

“You chew your lips off.”

“I need meth for my ADD. You know I'd be a wreck without it.”

“You're doing it right now.”

“That's because you're sketching me out!”

“Shut up and listen to me. I've been taking notes on you.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of loose leaf, my life laid out in point form. I started to twirl a cowlick near the crown of my head.

“Insomnia.”

“So what?”

“I don't know you anymore. You kick the turtles half the time, you're so out of it.”

“I turn most of my tricks at night.”

“Newsflash, Jaeven. They don't page you anymore, and now you're blowing all of
my
money on meth.”

“Oh, so now it's
your
money. Mommy cut you off?”

“Don't be cute, sugar-pie, it doesn't suit you. When was your last trick, and how long did that money last?”

“Whatever.”

My devil horn took shape under my working fingers.

“Have you looked at your teeth in a mirror lately? You have meth mouth. It's repulsive.”

“Have you offered to pay for a dentist?” I zinged back.

“Don't blame this on me. You're the one who's fucked up.”

He crinkled the paper, I'm guessing to signal a little victory.

“Dehydration, nausea, diarrhea, loss of appetite, rapid heartbeat, acne.”

“You got that list out of a book. Do you see any acne?”

“You're acting defensive because I'm confronting you. That's another
sign.”

“Wouldn't
you
defend yourself against false accusations? I don't have acne and I don't shit my pants ... Jeeeez. Did you learn all this from some talk show or something? One of those shows where everything wrong that happens is
because
of something? They tell you to confront the person, but they don't tell you that it only brings more conflict into the relationship. Well,
guess what—
messed-up shit happens all the time, so you'd better get used to it. And I never, ever tweak in front of you.”

“Talkativeness.”

“Fuck off.”

The cowlick. I was losing this.

“And please, stop punding. I can't take it.”

He sighed, walked over to the wall, and studied his latest canvas. My latest unpublished short story. A reform school never looked so piss-colored.

What's punding?” I said.

“Compulsive fascination with repetitive tasks. The twirling, the chewing your lips, the grinding your jaw, the trash you bring home—it's driving me mental.”

I was about to blurt out that life was nothing
but
a compulsive fascination with repetitive tasks, that we're all just doing the same old thing because we're afraid to try something new, that it's the punding that keeps us too busy to kill ourselves or to hurt others too much, but I took a different tack instead, one I instantly regretted.

“Why are you doing this? Why are we having this conversation?”

I don't know. I was expecting him to say that it was because he was worried about me, that he cared about me, that he wanted us to have a fresh start. But it was something very different.

“Because that's how you talk to liars.” He folded the sheet of paper back into his pocket and looked me in the eye. “You never told me the cops busted you for possession.”